I think we can only draw one conclusion from this interview: Michal Neuvirth is a supervillain.

Born of envy and lack of acknowledgement, he toiled in the shadows behind other, less talented goalies:

It’s true that until now, I have never been an official number one.

Always been the bridesmaid in the Washington crease, never the bride.

He was unappreciated and ignored by his coach:

I am happy about Oates [...] because it means Dale Hunter isn’t staying.

He simply didn’t talk to us goalies at all, I think he criticized us sometimes for no reason.

Now, slowly, his competition falls away, one by one…

At first – the Russian who was always in front of me because he was drafted higher and played in the NHL sooner. It was hard to get in front of him. But in the end I played much more than he did.

Hahaha…

I was the one who advised [Vokoun] to leave for Pittsburgh.

Ahahaha…

I am really sure that I have the weakest competition (Braden Holtby) I’ve ever had. I will try to be number one goalie this season. Finally!

MUAHAHAHAHA!
» Continue reading “Michal Neuvirth Reveals His Evil Plan”

Apparently the so-called “experts” at the Worldwide Leader all picked the Rangers to win this series. Well, I don’t know they can be experts when they don’t even seem to have seen the replay — or apparently any hockey for the last two weeks. If they had, they might have noticed that the Caps dethroned the reigning Stanley Cup champs and number 2 seed, while the Rags struggled mightily trying to boot the 8 seed and fellow national capital Senators. (Aside: if you suspect someone’s Canadian but can’t be sure, ask them what the capital of Canada is. A) They will know it in the first place, which I doubt more than 25% of Americans do, and B) they will say OttaWA with a stressed final syllable, while Americans would say OTTawa, with the final syllable trailing off into a schwa.)

Anyway, only 3 Andy Sutton approved experts did not pick the Rangers to win. They were: Barry Melrose, proud mullet-wearer and the only person at ESPN who I would believe even watched a second of hockey since the lockout besides John Buccigross (who seems to make it his life’s goal to remind ESPN hockey exists, much to their chagrin), James Murphy (if you can’t guess where he’s from by his name, let me just say — he’s trying to make the last round less embarrassing in retrospect), and Jesse Rogers (the Blackhawks guy, so presumably he just wants to support Troy Brouwer).

Now Puck Daddy I can get behind. These aren’t a bunch of hastily cobbled together predictions from whoever happens to cover sports in that city, these people live and breathe hockey. So… the only guy who thought the Capitals would take it was Greg Wyshynski, Don Puck himself. Well, that’s not so bad (ignoring that he, like myself, picked the SC Final to be VAN-PIT). He knows his stuff, and even though he lives in LouCou (represent!) he’s a Devils fan, so it’s not a homer pick. The closest thing P. Daddy has to a homer is Dmitry Chesnokov, who covers Russians, which means he’s been around DC for the last couple of years (remember when we had Ovie, Sasha, Fedorov, Kozlov, and Varly? I’m going to cry), and he picked the Rangers. Booooo!

It’s time to give Braden Holtby the ultimate test of a Capitals rookie goalie: pair him against Henrik Lundqvist in the playoffs. Varlamov did it, and Neuvy did it, so let’s see if Holtby can. Meanwhile, we’ll stick a PR guy in net at Kettler and have all the skaters practice shooting high glove side (fun fact: when I play goaltender, my personal mantra is “don’t drop your glove hand or else you’ll embarrass yourself like (Vezina nominee) Henrik Lundqvist”).

I’d also just like to mention that Brian Boyle is skating again. Now, I’m not totally sure why it was he was out, but I’m going to go ahead and assume it was rehab, since my father and I watched 24/7 and he appeared to be completely hammered in every scene (my father: “that guy again? he must be an alcoholic or something”). What’s that? Concussion-related symptoms you say? Well, don’t I feel like a twat now.

Check out the Rags coverage on the Intermission Report, at least until the new girl gets her site rolling (and watch out for the shaving cream pies, rookie!). Game’s at 3. We are louder!

(Oh, right, my prediction. Caps in 7, what else?)

Game 2 at Verizon against the Rangers in the 2009 playoffs was the first hockey game I ever went to. (Call me a bandwagoner or whatever, but I don’t think you really have a leg to stand on if you try to chirp my fandom for not being pure or real.) Jose had been pulled in game 1, so we started rookie goaltender whose trade I still haven’t gotten over Semyon Varlamov. We still lost 1-0, but snakes alive was it a good game. It gave us that precious commodity: hope.

It’s narratively fitting, at least for me. Capitals-Rangers series seem to happen at important moments in my life. The end of my freshman year, when my friends and I boycotted the Hot Dog King (because of King Henrik) and refused to use any Rangers in endless sessions of NHL 3-on-3 Arcade (I wasn’t particularly good at that game, but I was awesome at headset trash-talking).

The next series I was in Europe, and I watched game 5 in a bar in Prague. A waiter saw me watching and asked what team I was cheering for. “Washington, of course!”
“Washington is my favorite team as well! I am Russian, and we love Ovechkin!”
(It was the day before Easter, which I remember because the waiter convinced us to drink some absinthe, and the next morning, the church bells would just not stop ringing.)

And now: I had my last undergraduate class yesterday. Today I rung a ceremonial bell (literally, not Brashear-style) in the oldest building at an institute of higher education still in use. I graduate in eighteen days. I’m about to start out on my trek into the real world, when I can no longer excuse my personality defects due to being a student, and to accompany me I have a playoff series so familiar it’s like an old friend. There’s still Ovie, and Sasha, and Backstrom, and Green, and Henrik, and Marc-Staal, and Dubinsky, and Callahan. I have a folder full of pictures that makes me tear up because it was that series that made us believe, even more than the year before, that maybe these Capitals are something special.

And, just for funsies, here is my coverage of last year’s WAS-NYR series:
Game 1 (Money quote: “In previous years Bruce has jumped straight to starting Varly as a sort of nuclear option, but this year the dynamic isn’t veteran-miracle rookie, but miracle rookie-miracle rookie.”)
Game 2 (Money quote: an extended metaphor about Fortune being a woman, ending with “you invite her up for coffee, and you make damn sure Marvin Gaye is already on your stereo.”)
Game 3 (Money quote: “Game three will be a test of [Neuvy's] mental fortitude more than anything; the MSG crowd is down there with Philly in terms of politeness, and it only gets worse during the playoffs.”)
Game 4 (Money quote: “Gaborik has so far been kept off the scoresheet, probably because he’s never dealt with this mysterious “postseason” before and is unsure how to handle it. Do the same rules apply? What happened to the shootout? Now he has to find different ways to choke!”)
Game 5 (Money quote: “Speaking of Neuvirth, that was quite a game he pulled down on Wednesday. He and the whole Caps squad. Coming back from a 3-0 deficit is not something I generally think we’re capable of.”)

Game 1 is on Saturday at 3pm, so it’s the perfect opportunity for some day drinking (something that will only be socially acceptable for me for eighteen more days). I’m told we have a Rangers writer now, so check her out over on… well, the Intermission Report for now.

Looks like I spoke too soon, eh? I guess I should just be thankful I set myself up for a headline joke, much like the way Backstrom used to set up Ovechkin for the goal, which hasn’t happened in recent memory.
» Continue reading “The Capitals Have Lost Their Feet Again”

The offseason is always tough, even if you aren’t obliged to come up with an article about literally nothing on a regular basis (“Someone else is badmouthing Sasha?! Quelle horreur!”). But this offseason is even worse than usual, because every time I turn my computer on, something horrible has happened. And not horrible like my favourite goaltender is on the other side of the continent, or Tom Poti is still kind of broken, but horrible as in the hockey summer death count is nearly 50.

Today we add the Lokomotiv Yaroslavl KHL team to a list that already includes Derek Boogaard, Rick Rypien, and Wade Belak. Familiar faces from that team were Pavol Demitra and Ruslan Salei. And, fun fact, Lokomtiv is the team Varlamov would’ve gone to if we hadn’t traded him. So I look pretty foolish now for being so broken up about his being gone, eh?

The only two survivors are a flight attendant, suffering burns on 20-30% of his body, and Alexander Galimov, who, with burns on 80-90%, has a much slimmer chance of survival. He was apparently a personal friend of Ovechkin.

His reaction was:

I’m in shock!!!!!R.I.P ….

…which is probably as good an indication as any that pro athletes shouldn’t be on Twitter.

Speaking of the Great Eight, he’s now sponsored by Bauer! So that’s exciting.

Rookie camp starts Sunday, 9/11. Training Camp starts the Saturday after that, 9/17. Although if you’re an eagle eye, you might have spotted some Caps or prospective Caps training at Kettler already (apparently Mike Knuble is a real taskmaster when running casual practice!).

And of course, the season opener is October 8th against the Carolina Hurricanes. Clear your calendars.

Big news in the Capitals world: Alexander Ovechkin is going to endorse the Canadian candy bar Mr. Big!

All right, so it’s not terribly exciting, but in my defence, I’ve only just gotten to the point where I can see a picture of Semyon Varlamov without crying. It was a terrible shock to me to turn on my phone for the first time in a year and find my wallpaper to be darling Varly performing not just an acrobatic two-pad slide, but a comically inept and melodramatic save on a 5-year-old Make-A-Wish kid. We’ve lost good people here.

And speaking of, er, that whole thing, the Avalanche’s Erik Johnson had something to say about our miniscule silver lining; that is, the Av’s first rounder:

It’s not going to be a (high) pick. It’s going to end up being a great trade for us. People are saying we got the short end of the trade and they’re happy because they think we’re going to finish at the bottom of the league — and we’re not going to do that this year.

Dream on, sunshine.

It’s been a pretty busy summer in the front office, with pickups like Troy Brouwer, Joel Ward, Roman Hamrlik, and an outrageously good deal on Tomas Vokoun, all of whom will likely get extensively profiled as I scrounge for something to write about. (And, in compiling that list, I completely glossed over local boy Jeff Halpern — it’s like he never left us! I look forward to running into his children at the Cabin John stick and puck sessions.)

Various players stay with us, including Karl Alzner and Brooks Laich, though that latter came under question when a drunk Red Wings fan approached me at a party and said “Man, how do you feel about letting that guy, you know, that guy, Laich, go?” and I had a minor heart attack as I wondered how that news had escaped me. Turns out he was talking about Dave Steckel, who was actually traded mid-last-season. We quickly moved on to taunting an Osgood fangirl and making sarcastic toasts to Sidney Crosby to taunt a Penguins fangirl.

Training camp starts up again at the beginning of September, at which point there might be actual news.

Well, the shoe has dropped.

Quoth Semyon Varlamov:

I want to take this opportunity to say – Thank you – to the Washington Capitals organization, the coaching, training and medical staff and the wonderful Caps’ fans for their support throughout my career and wish the organization nothing but the best.

Semyon Varlamov has been dealt to the Colorado Avalanche for a first-round pick (!!) and a second-rounder. It’s important for me to mention that I am incapable of being objective on this subject: I have four pictures of Semyon Varlamov on my wall and am currently wearing a Varlamov jersey. I probably spent an hour and a half sobbing on and off after hearing the news.

So let me take a deep breath, gird my loins, and look at the advantages.

» Continue reading “Semyon Varlamov to the Avalanche (and other news)”

Yes, there is much to-do in the Capitals org of late. Things like Troy Brouwer and Brooks Laich, but if you picked two articles at random from this blog, I think you could extrapolate what recent news I find most compelling. No, it’s not Jagr’s waffling about which league and then team to join (I secretly hope it’s the Penguins and he absolutely implodes — can’t think of two things that deserve each other more).

» Continue reading “Semyon Varlamov to the KHL (probably)”

As the venerable Chris Difford said, ‘another nail for my heart.’ Arturs Irbe’s contract as the goaltending coach with the Washington Capitals ‘will not be renewed‘. (Link leads to a Google translation of a Sport-Express article)

In summary, he was hired because he was the ideal coach for Semyon Varlamov (aside from certain stylistic similarities, he spoke something like 5 languages, Russian among them), and if his services are no long required, we can only assume there are certain other services no longer required.

Irbe was the very definition of a tiny goalie — well, him and Allan Bester — and he spent the bulk of his time with the Sharks and the Hurricanes. I took a very poor quality cell phone picture of his commemorative comic at HP Pavilion, which, God willing, I won’t be able to find again. He was the sole focus of the only conversation I’ve ever had with a Latvian, and I once watched him eat lunch at a Panera with Capitals coaches Bob Wood and Dean Evason.

In short, he will be missed.

Are you reading The Goalie Guild obsessive-compulsively? Well, why not?! The most recent depth charts were released on June 5 and I must say, they are basically catnip to me. Yes, Goalie Guild! Tell me what Chet Pickard’s outlook is!

Anyway, if you scroll all the way down, you will stumble upon the Goaltending Depth Chart of the Washington Capitals. And there, in black and white…

2. Semyon Varlamov

There have been a lot of indications that Neuvy is our starter over Varly, such as him starting every game of the playoffs. But I don’t trust any source related to goaltending except The Goalie Guild, and to be quite honest I’ve simply been avoiding this until it was, er, unavoidable.

So it’s with the heaviest of hearts that I am forced to look seriously at the probability that Semyon Varlamov will not be with us next season.

» Continue reading “#1 on the Roster, #1 in my Heart”